Twitter is becoming a valuable tool to help English language teachers plan their lessons, according to an article on the Guardian website yesterday. 

Russell Stannard, Principle Teaching Fellow at The University of Warwick writes in the article: “…it [Twitter] is a very powerful sharing community where teachers can find a constant supply of articles, website links, lesson plans, interactive games, worksheets and a whole lot more.” 

Mr Stannard suggests using the hashtag feature to search Twitter for useful topics like Tesol, EFL, ELT and ESL. When people tweet material relating to these topics they will often ‘tag’ the tweet with one of the terms above so that it is easily searchable by people looking for information in that area. 

Mr Stannard also recommends some useful profiles to follow for those who are new to the programme, saying: “As for suitable individuals to follow I would suggest @NikPeachey, @ozge, @TheConsultantsE and @Larryferlazzo. A recent favourite of mine has been @AnaCristinaPrts. That would be enough to start a constant flow of material coming to your Twitter account.” 

Conversely, English language students have also found Twitter a useful tool for their learning, with many students practising tweeting English sentences followed by the hashtag #twinglish. 

Twin English Centres has started up a Twitter account to give advice and information to English teachers and overseas students who want to learn about English schools in Britain. Teachers and students can find out the latest information on Twin’s London and Eastbourne English schools by following the @TwinEnglish profile. 

Further on in the article, the University of Warwick Fellow goes on to address common concerns about privacy and spam issues when using Twitter. To read the full article about [using Twitter for teaching English, click here. 

Posted by Keith Broomer

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